No. 31: The Old-Skool Rave Revival Asks: Where Were You In ’92?

I admit it: I’ve been waiting for this one. Early-’90s rave, the goony stuff with the air-raid sirens, dithering bass drops, beats that alternately stomped or skittered with what then seemed like too much hurry, and today sounds almost quaint—this was some of the first music I ever felt a sense of ownership over, like it was mine before anyone’s. The apex of this epoch was breakbeat hardcore—or, as Simon Reynolds terms it, ‘ardkore: the stuff that would soon mutate into jungle and/or stick to its euphoric, glow-in-the-dark guns, adopt more of a four-on-the-floor stomp and become happy hardcore. The music of my dreams, even now, this stuff came rushing back in 2008.

I don’t just mean into my life, either—there, it never went away. But it was all over some of the year’s most notable records. Zomby’s “Spliff Dub (Rustie Remix)” (above), for example, has much the same combination of Jamaican rude-bwoy patois, spazzy synth spritz, and heavy bass pressure that marked many ‘ardkore anthems, albeit translated to modern dubstep rhythms. But Zomby would reach all the way back by himself to this stuff throughout Where Were U in ’92?, his full-length ode to the sound of pop music being refitted to a strange new tomorrow that never quite happened:

But who needed someone doing their own version of it when you could have the real thing? This was a bumper year for old-school rave reissues and compilations: vinyl repressings of obscure tunes from Sublogic, yes, but also CDs and digital releases from a host of leading labels from the period: R&S’s In Order to Dance, Awesome’s Awesome Records Classics Part 1, XL’s The First Chapters, and a number of compilations from Reinforced. Some of this stuff isn’t very obscure—a few of these tracks, such as the Prodigy and SL2 tracks off First Chapters, charted in England—but that’s part of why it’s so great to hear again: these were heavenly pop hits from a scene that was curdling at the center, as ecstasy abuse turned the rave scene sour.

Cool. I read through some of those old zines, just for fun. Didn’t see any representing LA though(they had Lotus, but not available to read…magazine was weak anyway). Still, cool shit.

Tenno

When I first got into electronic music in like, ’97 this song (and it still does) always brought an instant smile to my face:

New remix is awesome too!

Anonymous

don’t want to be a misery guts, but the zomby stuff is out now on various small indie labels – maybe a couple of links to beatport pages at the bottom might have been better than just the youtube references? :)

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